I'm sure there were others, but to my recollection, only iTunes 5 stayed at a full version number for less time than Telestream's Flip4Mac WMV 1. But here we are, less than a year later, and already Flip4Mac WMV 2 has been released. And even though the the product itself hasn't appreciably changed from version 1, there is still much to discuss.

Talk about a product that's made the rounds—Cleaner began life as Media Cleaner Pro at Terran Interactive, a company that was acquired by Media 100, who then sold Cleaner to Discreet, which was rebranded under the Autodesk moniker, and then...well, that's it. We're at the present day, and Autodesk Cleaner 6.5 is the latest version of the well-traveled, Mac-only compression program (Windows users have Cleaner XL, which is, like, 33.5 versions ahead). What it does, what's new, and if it's worth your time are all questions to ponder as we take a closer look.

Man alive, do I despise working out. I do it, and have managed to for years, but it's a never-ending struggle of gargantuan proportions to not get colossally bored while doing so. An iPod helps, but for me, music just wasn't getting the job done anymore. Talk radio was a nice diversion, but nirvana would be watching last night's episode of (whatever) while battling the elliptical machine. However, the video iPod, already notorious for scratches, is in need of some serious protection before I would even dare to bring it into the gym. Can anyone save the day?

Let me put this as succinctly as I can: if you use a Mac, you need to be using Path Finder 4. Period. That's about as direct as it gets. Granted, $34.95 may seem a bit steep just to replace a part of Mac OS X, but with the native Finder as (arguably) bad as it is and with Path Finder 4 as good as it is, the price is a pittance, especially in light of the sheer volume of features Path Finder 4 packs under the hood.

Well, folks, here we are. If you've lasted this long, you're about to get a taste of some long-awaited satisfaction. Finally, we're going to start writing some real ActionScript by way of a sample project, one which we'll start slowly with and continue to improve upon in the coming installments. I'm going to try to focus on different aspects of ActionScript (you know, the boring stuff from part 5) as we initialize and augment the project, so hopefully by the time we're done, you'll have a good jumping-off point for your own creations.

Ahh, 2002. The Patriots won their first Super Bowl, Attack of the Clones was in theaters, and the President had a run-in with a pretzel. Though it seems like a lifetime ago, 2002 was also the year I purchased my first iPod—a second-generation 20GB model that today, when compared to my recently-acquired iPod Video, looks about the size of your average doublewide. But faced with the daunting prospect of shelling out potentially hundreds of additional dollars for all-new accessories, I wanted to see if anything could be used with the latest model.